Episode 188 - A Publisher Spotlight on Avery Hill Publishing - a podcast by Stergios Botzakis & Derek Royal

Gwen and Derek are back with another publisher spotlight episode, this one on the UK press, Avery Hill Publishing. They begin their spotlight with a short interview with the people behind Avery Hill: Ricky Miller, Dave White, and Katriona Chapman. Derek talks with them about the origins of the press, the kind of creators that have come to define Avery Hill, their distribution and publicity outside of the UK, and their plans for fall releases and beyond.

After that conversation, Gwen and Derek get into the nitty gritty of the publisher's current offerings. They start by looking at the most recent issues of two ongoing series from Avery Hill, Reads #4 and Metroland #3. The former is an anthology periodical currently in its second volume, and the two discuss its various serialized storylines. Gwen is particularly fond of Owen D. Pomery's "The Megatherium Club," but they also discuss Reads other historically based stories -- Ricky Miller and Tim Bird's "Hitchcock and Film" as well as Bird and Luke James Halsall's "The Bullpen" (inspired by Marvel Comics in the early 1960s) -- and the colorful, offbeat comics of EdieOP. The most recent issue of Metroland continues the drama behind Ricky Miller and Julia Scheele's fictional 1980s band, Electric Dreams, and while discussing this evolving narrative, Derek and Gwen even wax nostalgic over their own musical histories growing up during that time.

Next, they discuss three new books released this spring. A City Inside is yet another work from Tillie Walden -- she's become a singular force at Avery Hill -- and this one is a measured, meditative look at self-identity with an almost poetic tone. Rachel Smith's Artificial Flowers does to the London art scene what Miller and Scheele's Metroland does with the city post-punk. Both the artist's unassuming premise and her clean, iconic art style easily draw Gwen and Derek into this fun story. And then finally, the cohosts wrap up with the latest book in Matthew Swan's Parsley Girl series. Neither Derek nor Gwen had been familiar with Swan's work previously, but Parsley Girl: Carrots proves to be a good introduction into his weird and almost psychedelic narrative world.

Overall, both Gwen and Derek find a lot of excitement behind this young press. Avery Hill may be just now getting a foothold in the US market -- thanks to its recent distribution agreement with Retrofit/Big Planet -- but as this episode demonstrates, it's definitely a publisher worth watching.

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